Big Wireless Data

At CNN Money, Kevin Kelleher writes about new numbers from Ericsson predicting major growth in wireless traffic:

Wireless data traffic will continue to grow 66% a year for the next five years. That means, by 2017, monthly mobile data traffic will reach 11.2 exabytes per month, or 13 times what it is right now. Other data points in the report underscore how big the mobile world has become and how quickly it will grow to be much, much bigger. Last year, some 4.3 billion people around the world had mobile devices, a population that will grow by close to a billion in five years.

Annual growth in data traffic will be significantly higher on smartphones (81%) and even higher on tablets (113%). However, smartphones will continue to be the biggest eaters of mobile-network data: In 2012, they made up 16% of devices connected to wireless networks and 44% of total traffic. In 2017, they will be 27% of connected devices and consume 68% of data.

Over 11 exabytes a month. To put that in perspective, it’s roughly the equivalent of 6 billion HD movies moving through the air each month.